It’s the new year, so I thought it was about time I said hello!
As Web Content Manager, I’m the editor responsible for all content you read, watch and listen to on bath.ac.uk. My job is to make sure that I keep our 2.5 million readers happy; not an easy task trust me.
This is something I am familiar with from my previous role at Bournemouth University, working as part of a HEIST nominated team for education marketing.
With over a quarter of a million pages we share many of the same problems other large organisations have with content, including:
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Posted in: communication
2011 has been a busy year here in Web Services. We have had five colleagues leave, another one head off to have twins and four new people start. We have released sites, deleted applications, built all manner of awesome stuff and solved problems. Through it all, we have worked hard to demonstrate the value of engaging with the web properly and professionally.
This is the point where I am supposed to give some kind of retrospective about what has and what hasn’t worked. We tried Scrum as a project management setup, for instance. That didn’t work for us but we learned a lot from our experiences and many aspects are still present in our day to day working practices. We tried a specific mobile site for out last Open Day. The statistics and feedback show that this was a success, and one we could better in the future.
It is difficult to single out a single event as the definitive expression of the team’s work during the year however I’m going to give it a go. For me, the pinnacle was the launch of the new homepage. It marked the point where the central university site changed from being old and blue with a few new-style pages into a proper new site with some old and blue pages yet to be replaced. It really was a turning point and I think the way the site is changing into a professionally designed and written cohesive environment is a great monument to the hard work of everyone in Web Services.
Lots of other things have happened, of course. It would be lovely to have everyone here select high points from the last year however since almost everyone else has already retired for the year for a well-earned rest, I’m going to abandon that idea. All that remains is to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from everyone here at Web Services!
Posted in: team
I have been here for nearly 3 months now and thought I had better introduce myself.
I am the Web Supporter for the University of Bath. In other words, the friendly face at the other end of the RT queue here at Web Services! So far it has been a very interesting and varied role with a range of queries about all things web and delivering training courses on the Content Management System. It is a very different environment after working for Wiltshire Police previously but at least I don’t get chairs thrown at me anymore!
During my time here so far I have attended the Web Dev Conference in Bristol which had some really interesting presentations about HTML5 and Designing for Emotion. Some exciting things to come I think in the world of web.
I have also been compiling statistics regarding the queries and requests we get through the RT system and I have found some very interesting facts regarding the queries that we get.
Did you know that in November:
- 10% of tickets received needed more information from the requestor
- The top query was to ask about making changes to a CMS page
So please make sure you include as much information as you can when making a request or raising a query.
I have also made an analysis of tickets in the last 3 months and the number of tickets resolved within 1 day has increased by 34% and the number of tickets resolved within 1 week has increased by 35% – so we are definitely going in the right direction as you can see:
Graph of RT queries resolved in 1 week
I am really enjoying myself here and look forward to bumping in to one or two of you around the campus soon.
Oh, and Merry Christmas!
Posted in: communication
November13
By: Phil Wilson
For our September 2011 Open Day we put together a single-page destination specifically for the event.
The percentage of visitors to our site whom Google Analytics classifies as using “Mobile” devices currently runs at 3.4% (up from 1.4% this time last year) but since we always see a spike in mobile traffic on an Open Day and during the days leading up to it we thought we’d try and make a little more of it.
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Posted in: communication
November9
By: Phil Wilson
It’s been just over three months since our glorious leader, Alison Kerwin, left on maternity leave – since then I’m delighted to be able to say that not only has she added two healthy bouncing babies to the fray but we’ve also had four new members of the team start!
Sophie has already said hello on this blog and over the next few weeks the other three (Julian Buchannun, Chris Shimmin-Vincent and Rich Prowse) will also be introducing themselves here -you can get a sneak preview on our Team page!. We’re really thrilled to have them on board, helping us deliver the best web experience that we possibly can.
Of course having also recently said goodbye to both Andy Savin and Yvonne Aburrow we now have some vacancies in the team again which we’ll be advertising as soon as we can, so keep your eyes peeled!
Posted in: communication
I’m leaving today, so I thought it would be fun to look back over the nine and a half years I have spent working here.
When I first came to work at the University of Bath in 2002, I worked as an Experimental Officer in the Psychology Department (covering maternity leave). None of my friends were quite sure what an experimental officer was – in fact I was there to build the website and catalogue the extensive library of journal articles and videos.
In 2003, I was recruited by Dave Cunningham to work for Computing Services, building a website called the Research Observatory, which provides an overview of how to get a PhD. The project eventually migrated to the University of the West of England, where it still exists.
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Posted in: communication
